Sat, Nov 21, 2009

Democratic Sen. Mary Landrieu's vote in favor of Obamacare was purchased for $300 million on Saturday, giving Democrats the 60-vote supermajority that will, barring a miracle, pass health care reform that will possibly include a public option and abortion coverage.

Fri, Nov 20, 2009

Worried about trying the ringleader of the 9/11 terrorists and four of his close associates in a civilian courtroom? Don't be, says our president. He knows just how the trial will turn out -- Khalid Sheik Mohammed will be convicted and executed. We have his word on it.

The Boy Scouts' motto is: Be prepared. Who knew it meant preparing to defend themselves against purple-shirted union thuggery over community service? Kids, pay attention. This is a teachable moment for all of you on power, politics and Big Labor's culture of corruption.

It is amazing how a phrase can emerge seemingly out of nowhere to become the statement du jour -- used, overused and ultimately abused. Last year, there was "low-hanging fruit" everywhere. Today, everyone's being "thrown under the bus."

Attorney General Eric Holder adopted a tough guy pose when he announced that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four others will be tried in federal court for the most heinous terror attack on Americans in history.

This week, while "the most traveled president in history" was on his latest foreign adventure and bowing to Japanese Emperor Akihito, the rest of the O-Team was busy kowtowing to political correctness.

Sarah Palin arouses venom from the left like Hillary Clinton from the right. On the day after her Oprah interview, Richard Cohen in The Washington Post said it was time for "Palintolgy," punning ungallantly on the study of fossils.

If there was ever a more irresponsible decision by a U.S. attorney general than Eric Holder's decision to try the mastermind of the 9/11 terrorist attack and four others as common criminals in a civilian court in New York City, I can't recall it.

For late-19th-century anarchists, terrorism was the "propaganda of the deed." And the most successful propaganda-by-deed in history was 9/11 -- not just the most destructive, but the most spectacular and telegenic.

December’s global warming conference in Copenhagen looms like a dark cloud on the horizon – just a few weeks away. The greedy left (and that’s pretty much all of them) is calling for “climate reparations.”

It cannot be said often enough that the chief of staff of the United States Army, Gen. George Casey, responded to a massacre of 13 Americans in which the suspect is a Muslim by saying: "Our diversity ... is a strength."

When the Framers of the Constitution determined that elected representatives should be allowed to serve consecutive terms in office, they couldn’t have foreseen anything like the multi-year, multi-million dollar campaigns of the twenty-first century.

When a military officer participates in a war against his own country, that is high treason, and that is the charge that ought to be brought against Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan. But it's not going to happen.

On his 10-day trip to Asia and in his 10th month in office, Barack Obama is beginning to encounter limits on his ambition to change the world. Even as he bowed to the king of Saudi Arabia last April and to the emperor of Japan last week, the world refuses to bow back.

A former congressional aide offered this ominous assessment following the House of Representatives' passage of "health care reform." Warning to the Senate: President Obama and his party face political catastrophe if you fail to do your part so that the President can sign a bill!

In the late 1960s, actress Doris Day filmed her last major motion picture. It was a comedy about the chaos that ensues when a widow and widower marry, forcing two families and two sets of friends to converge.

What would the mainstream media's response be if former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin described China's economic growth to an audience of students in Shanghai as "an accomplishment unparalleled in human history"?

In 2006, long before there was an Obama administration determined to impose a command-and-control federal health care system, a young orthopedic surgeon walked into the Goldwater Institute here with an idea. The institute, America's most potent advocate of limited government, embraced Eric Novack's idea for protecting Arizonans from health care coercion.

President Obama took his declining dollar to the Asia-Pacific economic conference, and he added to it a declinist opinion of America's economy. His big message? Don't count on American consumers to lead the world from recession to recovery and beyond.

Wed, Nov 18, 2009

By overwhelmingly electing Bob McDonnell as their governor, Virginians sent a clear message to national leaders about the future of small business. McDonnell made clear his opposition to the Employee ‘Forced’ Choice Act or EFCA, job-killing legislation that would give union bosses increased political spending power at the expense of worker freedoms and rights.

President Obama traveled all the way to China to praise the free flow of information. It's the only safe place he could do so without getting heckled. With a straight face, Obama lauded political dissent and told Chinese students he welcomed unfettered criticism in America. Fierce opposition, he said, made him "a better leader because it forces me to hear opinions that I don't want to hear." How do you say "You lie!" in Mandarin?

Picking up the Sunday paper Nov. 15 could make a reader a little airsick -- even while standing in the driveway. The Washington Post "news analysis" on the front page carried the headline "9/11 trial could become a parable of right and wrong: Before worldwide audience, both prosecution, defense seek control of narrative."

Regardless of the future of Obamacare, the most important health decisions wont be made by Congress, or bureaucrats, or insurance companies, or doctors, or hospitals, but by individual Americans with their personal choices and habits.

The dynamic of the health care debate is decidedly turning against the administration. As details of the doctor shortage, Medicare cuts, tax increases, penalties for no insurance, shallow subsidies and high costs for the uninsured all leak out, more and more Americans are developing qualms about the bill.

Eric Holder -- distinguished prosecutor, judge, foe of public corruption, basketball enthusiast, mentor to disadvantaged youth -- seemed a reassuring choice for attorney general. When Holder affirmed during his confirmation hearing that America remains at war with terrorists, Sen. Lindsay Graham enthused, "I'm almost ready to vote for you right now." So how did Holder become the most destructive member of Barack Obama's Cabinet?

Sen. Jim DeMint's (R-S.C.) is resurrecting the debate about federal term limits with a new push to limit service by Members of the House and Senate to a maximum of twelve years. The main reason he is renewing efforts on this front is to curb the growth of government.

Tue, Nov 17, 2009

President Obama took his declining dollar to the Asia-Pacific economic conference, and he added to it a declinist opinion of America’s economy. His big message? Don’t count on American consumers to lead the world from recession to recovery and beyond. His second big message? In the U.S., we must save more and spend less.

Why is the Obama administration transferring Khalid Sheik Mohammed, who proudly proclaims himself the mastermind of the September 11 attacks, to a federal district court in New York? Has the defendant tired of the tropical breezes at Guantanamo? Would a change of scenery to the urban reaches of lower Manhattan improve his spirits? Or just those of a new administration bent on change if only for change's sake?

Late on Friday, Attorney General Holder announced President Obama’s decision that the alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheik Mohammad and his confederates would be tried in federal court in New York City rather than before a military tribunal.

Teaching introductory logic for ten years made me vividly aware of the low average quality of reasoning among college students. It also showed me how little improvement can realistically be accomplished by only one semester’s training in the art of thinking clearly.

Liberalism is an extraordinarily deceptive, ruinous and cruel ideology. That's because liberalism comes, arms wide open, whispering sweet words of compassion and pity, even as it forcefully slams down a boot upon the neck of people it's "helping."

In the string of amazing decisions made during the first year of the Obama administration, nothing seems more like sheer insanity than the decision to try foreign terrorists, who have committed acts of war against the United States, in federal court, as if they were American citizens accused of crimes.

While the military still is reeling and recovering from the massacre at Fort Hood, my wife, Gena, and I decided to boost the morale of military personnel by visiting the cadets at West Point and the wounded warriors at Brooke Army Medical Center, at Fort Sam Houston. Little did I know that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the shooter at Fort Hood, was hospitalized there.

I can think of a number of motives President Barack Obama might have for his egregious decision to bring Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and four other high-profile al-Qaida terrorists to New York for trial in our civil courts. Regardless of which motives apply, one thing is clear: Our enemy is at war against us while we are in a suicidal, 9/10 state of denial.

President Obama, who nearly prostrated himself before the king of Saudi Arabia last April, has once again bowed low to a monarch -- this time to the emperor of Japan. What to make of this obsequious body language?

The Obama administration has chosen the wrong New York venue to try five co-conspirators in the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the United States. Instead of a Manhattan courtroom less than a mile from the site of where the World Trade Center stood, the government should have chosen the Bronx Zoo, because a zoo is what will be created when this terrorist trial is held.

There may be a major silver lining for conservatives and for America's future thanks to the foreign and domestic policies of President Obama and the Democrat-controlled House and Senate: For the first time in their lives, millions of Americans are coming to understand the left.

Are we at war -- or not? For if we are at war, why is Khalid Sheikh Mohammed headed for trial in federal court in the Southern District of New York? Why is he entitled to a presumption of innocence and all of the constitutional protections of a U.S. citizen?

The current Administration appears to be tax-credit happy. They gave people $4,000 to get rid of their old cars and buy new ones. They are handing out $8,000 to new homebuyers. Now they are thinking of a tax credit for jobs. There are already too many tax credits on the books which do nothing other than encourage small changes in behavior and large amounts of fraud.

Another kooky Barack Obama appointee became publicly known this month and quickly was thrown or voluntarily threw herself under the bus. Anita Dunn, the White House communications director (who led Obama's war on Fox News), said that Mao Zedong was one of her two favorite "political philosophers" whom "I turn to most" for answers to important questions.

A major detail of the Fort Hood horribleness has escaped comment, insofar as I can tell. I'm going to comment, therefore -- with no expectation that many if any will note the civilizational shift it connotes.

Unfortunately lessons learned 400 years ago have yet to be adopted where the Church of Anthro-Climatism is involved. Burning dissenters at the stake may no longer be an option – perhaps because it would send prodigious quantities of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

Sun, Nov 15, 2009

Every time I read, view, or hear the latest attempt to portray Nidal Malik Hasan as a “loner” or “victim of racism” or “psychotic” – or (this may be my favorite) someone suffering from something called “PRE-traumatic stress disorder,” I am torn between the desire to scream or laugh.

President George W. Bush repeatedly asserted that Muslims are “peace-loving” people, and President Obama has made this idea a central theme of his presidency. Yet Bush was also willing to confront what he called a “radical ideology with an unalterable objective.

House Democrats are celebrating a first-round victory in the battle to nationalize America's health care system—a victory claimed on behalf of every American's right to high-quality, affordable health care [cue patriotic music].

A dispute that has flared intermittently for more than 30 years has been fueled afresh, and perhaps settled, by a Spanish professor who has established that the photo could not have been taken when and where it reportedly was -- Sept. 5, 1936, near Cerro Muriano.

The Obama administration grossly underestimated the response of the American people in it's decision to try war-field combatants as common thieves in criminal courts handed down this week by Attorney General Holder.